In the Pipeline/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/
en-usderekb.lowe@gmail.com2014-12-09T08:06:52-05:00hourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00How Many Things Can Be Enzymes, Anyway?http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/12/09/how_many_things_can_be_enzymes_anyway.php
For many years, enzymes were thought to be basically the only biological catalyst molecules out there. Then things like ribozymes were discovered, and it was appreciated that the nucleic acid polymers could also bind substrates and catalyze their reactions. That...77493@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2014-12-09T08:06:52-05:00We Don't Know What We're Missinghttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/11/10/we_dont_know_what_were_missing.php
I enjoyed this article in Science about looking for hidden types of life. There are, of course, plenty of microorganisms that can't be cultured (this has been known for a long time). And there are plenty of odd DNA sequences...77436@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2014-11-10T07:30:55-05:00Artificial Base Pairs in Living Cellshttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/05/08/artificial_base_pairs_in_living_cells.php
Synthetic biology seems to have taken another big step. Many labs over the years have tried out expanding the genetic code in various ways, but all these run in various in vitro systems. Now the first organism has been engineered...77111@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Biological News2014-05-08T06:12:28-05:00Thermodynamics of Lifehttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2014/02/07/thermodynamics_of_life.php
Origin-of-life studies have been a feature of chemistry for a long time, and over the years some key questions have become clear. It's clear from astronomical and planetary science data that the common molecules of organic chemistry are more or...76943@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2014-02-07T06:39:18-05:00Hybrid Biomolecules, Edible And Nothttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/06/28/hybrid_biomolecules_edible_and_not.php
While writing up that eight-toxic-foods rebuttal the other day, I started reading up on Olestra, the "fake fat" that made the list. While it has to be considered a failure for its developers, I found the chemistry behind it interesting,...76508@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2013-06-28T07:47:11-05:00How Many Binding Pockets Are There?http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/05/22/how_many_binding_pockets_are_there.php
Just how many different small-molecule binding sites are there? That's the subject of this new paper in PNAS, from Jeffrey Skolnick and Mu Gao at Georgia Tech, which several people have sent along to me in the last couple of...76431@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Biological News2013-05-22T06:58:53-05:00The Galaxy Is Full of Gunkhttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/11/21/the_galaxy_is_full_of_gunk.php
We'll start off with a little extraterrestrial chemistry. As many will have heard, there are all sorts of hints being dropped that the sample analyzing equipment on the Mars Curiosity rover has detected something very interesting. We'll have to wait...76016@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Chemical News2012-11-21T07:36:52-05:00Arsenic Life No Morehttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/10/08/arsenic_life_no_more.php
The "arsenic life" bacterium has taken a number of blows in the scientific literature, and now it's taken another. A close look at its phosphate uptake system shows that these proteins in the GFAJ-1 bacteria not selective for arsenate (or...75914@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2012-10-08T06:12:53-05:00The Redfield Paper Is Out (And So Are Arsenic Bacteria, It Seems)http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/06/05/the_redfield_paper_is_out_and_so_are_arsenic_bacteria_it_seems.php
Via Curious Wavefunction comes the news that Rosie Redfield and her lab have their paper coming out in Science refuting the "arsenic bacteria" results. It should be out on the journal's web site shortly, but is available at Arxiv beforehand....75685@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2012-06-05T06:26:30-05:00Arsenic Bacteria Ride Again. (Or Don't).http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2012/01/27/arsenic_bacteria_ride_again_or_dont.php
You may not have heard much about the arsenic-bacteria controversy recently, but you're about to hear quite a bit more. Rosie Redfield of UBC, one of the fastest and most vocal critics of the original paper, has been trying to...75409@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2012-01-27T07:56:13-05:00A First Step Toward A New Form of Lifehttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/07/06/a_first_step_toward_a_new_form_of_life.php
There's been a real advance in the field of engineered "unnatural life", but it hasn't produced one-hundredth the headlines that the arsenic bacteria story did. This work is a lot more solid, although it's hard to summarize in a snappy...75079@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Biological News2011-07-06T07:03:57-05:00Arsenic in DNA: The Kinetic Argument.http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2011/01/28/arsenic_in_dna_the_kinetic_argument.php
Here's the first response in the chemical literature to the arsenic-in-DNA controversy, from three authors in ACS Chemical Biology. They detail the argument, familiar to readers of the comment section here, that arsenate esters just would not be expected to...74843@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2011-01-28T13:24:26-05:00Life With Arsenic: Who'd Have Thought?http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/12/02/life_with_arsenic_whod_have_thought.php
Update: a further look at the details of this paper is in a later post. So: arsenic for phosphorus? That's the big news from NASA today. I listened to much of the press conference, and I've read the paper in...74779@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Life As We (Don't) Know It2010-12-02T17:11:06-05:00Chemical Biology - The Future?http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/09/23/chemical_biology_the_future.php
I agree with many of the commenters around here that one of the most interesting and productive research frontiers in organic chemistry is where it runs into molecular biology. There are so many extraordinary tools that have been left lying...74680@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Biological News2010-09-23T07:38:01-05:00Let's Sequence These Guyshttp://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/04/08/lets_sequence_these_guys.php
A very weird news item: multicellular organisms that appear to be able to live without oxygen. They're part of the little-known (and only recently codified) phylum Loricifera, and these particular organisms were collected at the bottom of the Mediterranean, in...74395@/home/corante/public_html/pipeline/Biological News2010-04-08T11:22:38-05:00